


i would ruin myself a million little times

by melsandre



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alex Blake is the love of my life, F/F, JJ is the best friend that Alex deserves, im truly sorry for the angst, so is Emily Prentiss though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25584769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melsandre/pseuds/melsandre
Summary: lauren (6x18) au and rewrite where alex joined the team in s5 and she and emily have been in a serious but secretive relationship. alex is the one to find emily in the warehouse rather than derek, so the scene is quite different. this is really sad, i'm sorry.trigger warning for a mention/description of roslyn's suicide.
Relationships: Alex Blake/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	i would ruin myself a million little times

The blackness of the warehouse was oppressive, worming its way into her chest and pressing harshly at her ribs. Logically, Alex knew that there was a possibility Emily was already dead – lying limp in some stained corner, cold and hollow – but it was a thought that she would never be able to fully rationalize. She followed the distant sound of what she could only hope was Emily still alive and fighting. Then, everything went quiet. It was that telling, horrible silence sent Alex sprinting. 

She found Emily lying alone, a wooden stake slicing into her body. Her abdomen was soaked in blood, shirt dark and sodden. She had several shallow lacerations across her face and a bruise that flowered around one of her eyes. Alex could see that her breathing was ragged, but the look that had settled on her face was almost peaceful. She called for a medic, keeping her eyes trained on Emily as a surge of queasiness washed over her. 

Alex knelt beside her girlfriend who shifted weakly when she felt her presence. She stretched the fingers of her left hand up to brush her temple while she intertwined her right hand with both of hers where they curled at her chest. The blood loss was already eating away at Emily and she was losing responsiveness quickly, eyes starting to glaze over. 

“Emily,” Alex pleaded, “Emily, stay awake.” 

The darker-haired woman whimpered faintly, stray tears leaking from the corners of her half-lidded eyes. Alex pressed a tender kiss against her forehead and then her mouth. 

“Em, look at me, please.” 

Emily sluggishly blinked her eyes back open, trying her best to do as Alex asked, but she was tired. Her body was beginning to shut down and there was nothing Alex could do but watch it happen. The seconds that they spent alone in that frozen room felt much closer to several eternities. Then, in an overwhelming flurry of activity, the team was there. Hotch called again for a medic, fear seeping into the words he spoke. Alex felt as Emily started to slip away from her, felt her grip begin to loosen. It was then that she realized she was crying. 

“Alex,” Emily said, nearly inaudible, “I love you.” 

“No, no, no,” Alex shook her head violently, “Stop.”

“Let me go.” 

“Stop,” she choked back the panic that rose from her diaphragm, “Emily.” 

Everything crumbled in one single moment. Emily let her eyes fall shut, losing consciousness just seconds before the paramedics found them and then Derek was pulling her away from Emily, trying to give them space to work. When Alex was forced to let go of her hands, a mangled sob erupted from her chest and she fought, tried to push out of his arms and get back to Emily. She screamed and begged incoherently as tears streamed down her face in uncontrollable rivulets. 

“Please,” she twisted in his arms, “Please, I need to be with her.” 

“Alex,” JJ stood in front of her, hands spread wide in a placating gesture, “Alex. We have to let them take care of her.” 

Alex sucked in a breath, feeling like her lungs were on the verge collapsing. “I love her,” she sobbed, “I love her, JJ. How am I supposed to…” She closed her eyes tightly, “If Emily dies…” 

***

_ Alex felt the hand splayed across her abdomen twist into the fabric of her top possessively. Emily, who seemed only half-conscious, buried her face deeper into the curve of her neck as she tugged Alex closer. She had been extra clingy the night before after being unusually reserved at work that day, which had been when Alex clocked that something was off. Her girlfriend had looked at her with those soft brown eyes and silently begged her not to ask about it – whatever it was. So, Alex had kept quiet, swallowed all her questions and kissed her back rather than pry. She had welcomed the kisses Emily pressed furiously across her jaw, her neck, her clavicle, and smiled lovingly when Emily pushed her onto the bed a little too desperately.  _

_ “Emily,” she whispered, tracing a hand up her spine. _

_ “Can we just stay here,” Emily mumbled against her pulse point.  _

_ Alex laughed gently and a tingling sort of affection rushed through her veins. In another world, one void of serial killers and rapists and all the monsters they chased, they might do nothing but burrow deeper into each other, shying away from the morning sun. In this universe, the weight of their responsibility was far too heavy to shed, much as either of them might want to.  _

_ After the death of her son, Alex had never expected to find any permanent sort of peace. That had been an absolute and inimitable truth for years, she had never searched for a cure to her restlessness or the pain that ached deep and knotted in her stomach. Then, Emily had leveled that lingering gaze at her, desire pooling in her eyes, and it had knocked the air from her lungs; that had been when Alex felt like she might be able to love again.  _

_ She raked her fingers through Emily’s hair, “We gotta go.”  _

_ Emily whined petulantly.  _

_ Alex rolled her eyes, “Emily.”  _

_ Emily sighed dramatically before kissing the other woman soundly and regretfully extricating herself from her embrace. She sat back on her heels as Alex sat up, chewing nervously on her lower lip. She went quiet and studied Alex for a minute.  _

_ Emily looked at her seriously, “I love you, you know.”  _

_ “I know,” Alex squeezed her hand, “I love you.”  _

_ In lieu of responding, Emily kissed her again.  _

***

The smell of hospitals made Alex feel ill. It reminded her of the nights she spent watching her son sleep, nails dug into her forearms, too afraid to close her eyes in case he slipped away. That universal low buzzing of fluorescent lighting and stickiness of commercial linoleum reminded her of those last days. She had laid beside him, counting his every breath in the final few moments of his life, and watched her marriage splinter right in front of her. Alex had unraveled when they tried to move him, heaving angry sobs and collapsing against the husband she knew would leave her. There had been nothing surprising or hurried about his death, but it had still pierced Alex with a suddenness that left her grasping weakly for anything to pull her out of the consuming emptiness she felt. 

She raised her head at the sound of JJ taking careful steps toward them, eyes red and puffy. Alex knew that look, the way people looked at you when they knew they were going to say something that might shatter you. It was the same look she had faced when three separate doctors had told her that her baby boy was dying. It was then that she knew – before JJ could even verbalize it – Emily was dead. 

Alex watched as JJ steeled herself, “She never made it off the table.” 

Spencer staggered in the direction JJ had come from, some instinct sending him chasing after Emily even in her death before JJ stopped him gently and pulled him into a hug. Penelope was sobbing, loud and expressive and broken – she loved people too fiercely to grieve in any contained sort of way. Ashley had gone silent, eyes wide and mouth gaping, too shocked to fully grieve yet; she would leave the BAU, Alex knew, as soon as the time felt appropriate. Morgan just looked angry – angry at himself, at Emily, at Doyle – he would break down later, once the full force of her absence hit him. Rossi kept his gaze focused on the floor and Hotch had schooled his features into an impressively composed expression, both of them trying to hold themselves together for the sake of the team. 

Warm tears splashed across her cheeks. The thought of some lifeless shell of a person lying in an operating room wearing the face of her girlfriend as the shrill drone of a monitor announced her death, blood still caked across her brow bone and tubes shoved down her throat, was sickening. The thought of what would happen once they moved her body to the morgue was even worse. Anxiety clawed inside her lungs, she felt like she might vomit. The wave of nausea that had swelled up from her toes was accompanied by a horrible sort of dizziness that left her reeling. Everything felt muddled. 

JJ was suddenly kneeling in front of her, mouthing something Alex couldn’t understand because everything had gone quiet and all she could hear was her own pulse rushing in her ears. She was having a panic attack, Alex realized belatedly as she felt her breathing rattle. Those had started after her son had died, the weight of her grief so crushing that it had frequently sent her spiraling. Her emotional stability had been demolished, and she had completely thrown herself into her work because that was the one thing that distracted her enough to keep her from crying. That was when James left her, not that she blamed him for it, their relationship had been too fucked up to come back from. Alex had never expected to love anyone again and certainly not as resolutely as she loved Emily. 

“Alex,” JJ repeated, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. “Alex, look at me.” 

***

_ Alex stood at the edge of the apartment in front of the colossal floor-to-ceiling windows she loved so much, a glass of Merlot in hand, as she watched the lights of the city flicker and shine against the late evening sky. They had returned home only thirty minutes ago. It had been a fairly standard case (that she could classify any of their cases as ‘standard’ should have felt strange), one that had been wrapped up relatively quickly and neatly. Hotch had granted them all of the following day off, which both Emily and Alex welcomed, despite being equally as absorbed in their jobs, mostly because it would give them the chance to be together away from the sometimes intrusive eyes of their team.  _

_ Strong arms wrapped around her middle as Emily slid up behind her.  _

_ “Hi,” Alex murmured. She lifted the wine glass to her lips, drawing a long sip, and nestled back into Emily.  _

_ “You okay?”  _

_ Alex sighed, “Yeah. Tired.”  _

_ Emily hummed some intelligible noise of agreement against her hair. Their lives came with an unshakeable exhaustion. It sunk deep into the bones and left Alex wanting nothing more than to melt into bed and sleep for days. For now, she relaxed into Emily with a contented smile playing at the corners of her eyes. Being around the darker-haired woman soothed her like nothing else; she had never in her life felt safer than when Emily held her.  _

***

The glass of scotch in her hand slipped clumsily from her fingers, fracturing again the hardwood floor. Alex blinked at it helplessly, eyes welling with fresh tears; the sound of her own broken screams ricocheted coarsely in her head. A strangled sort of laugh turned sob twisted in her throat. If she had looked up she might have seen the considerable look of concern that Hotch aimed at JJ or the one of tearful sympathy that Garcia wore. 

“Alex,” JJ touched a hand to her forearm, “let me drive you home.” 

She nodded mutely. Sparing a glance at the rest of the team, most of whom watched her with confused pity, she trailed behind the blonde. They would never understand why she felt so fucking broken, not really. How could they when they knew almost nothing about her relationship with Emily. They would never know just how carefully Emily had healed her, how sweetly and profoundly she had loved her. 

Alex slipped into the passenger seat. She swallowed thickly – throat raw and scratched. It felt like someone had cleaved her chest in half. They drove in silence for what seemed like twenty minutes until JJ asked quietly, “Why didn’t you tell us?” 

Alex danced her fingers along her thigh absentmindedly. “We wanted to, were going to soon actually. At first, we hardly even knew how we felt for each other, so we thought it best to work out our own feelings first. Then, it was just easier somehow to keep it to ourselves, and honestly, it was nice to have something that was completely private and just between the two of us.” 

“Okay,” JJ said. Her immediate, steadfast acceptance offered at least some comfort. The expression she wore was open and mellow and it made Alex get teary all over again. She was fairly certain that Hotch had asked JJ to keep an eye on her, which was a reasonable request given just how unhinged Alex herself had felt the past few days. She was mostly just grateful it was JJ, out of any member of the team. JJ, who was understanding and sincere but never overbearing. JJ, who she knew would never pry or ask too much of her. 

“I could have helped her,” Alex admitted, voice laden with guilt, “I knew something was wrong, but I never confronted her about it. If I had asked… she might have told me and let me help.” 

JJ shook her head gently, “She was protecting you – all of us. There was nothing you could have done to change things.” Alex pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the tears that pricked in the back of her eyes. JJ continued firmly, “You’ll go crazy if you try to blame this on yourself.” 

For once Alex had no response, she just sat there, quiet and numb, lost in her head until JJ took the final turn toward the apartment she shared with Emily. She wanted nothing more than to fling herself into their bed and cry until she felt empty, whenever that might be. There was just so much inside her, so much feeling and grief. She was stuffed full of it and she wanted it gone. 

“Do you want me to walk you up?” JJ looked at her kindly. Alex looked for pity in her eyes but found none, only earnestness. 

She smiled limply, “No, I’ll be alright. Thank you.” 

“Alex,” JJ said, just before Alex could shut the door, “You will feel okay again.” 

Alex nodded, voice seized in her throat. Grieving a sister was different than grieving a lover, but Alex knew JJ had some acute and horrible familiarity with the pain that flared across every inch of her body. Finding your sister in the bathtub, wrists slit and drenched in her own blood must have felt somewhat similar, Alex imagined, to finding your girlfriend beaten and bleeding out on dirty cement. Despite how well acquainted both she and JJ were with death, Alex instinctively knew that this time was different, this time she might not ever be okay again. She was ripped to shreds, but this time there was no Emily to mend the hurt that shot through every cell in her body. This time, she might not make it through. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Twitter @aiexbiakes and buy me a coffee if you're feeling nice because I really am a college student just trying their best: https://ko-fi.com/alexblakes <3


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